Photo

— Repeat the lyric, “Well, I’m a standin’ on a corner in Winslow , Arizona ,” and watch the glint of recognition in people’s eyes.

So it should come as no surprise that the line from “ Take It Easy ,” the 1972 hit by the Eagles, has become the lifeblood of tiny Winslow’s tourism trade.

On the corner of Second Street and Kinsley Avenue, on Route 66, sits Standin’ on the Corner Park, a homage to the open-highway ballad that now draws hundreds of visitors every day and has revived this dusty railroad town between Flagstaff and the New Mexico border.

The park’s main attraction is a life-size bronze statue of a floppy-haired man with a guitar, the song’s protagonist. (Locals point out that the statue, by the sculptor Ron Adamson, is neither Jackson Browne, who wrote the song with Glenn Frey, nor Mr. Frey, the Eagles member who sang it.)

Advertisement Continue reading the main story

A cherry-red vintage flatbed Ford truck is parked nearby. And on a brick wall behind the statue and truck is a large mural, by John Pugh, featuring a grinning blonde in such a truck, who clearly — as the song says — is “slowin’ down to take a look” at the itinerant all-American musician who has caught her eye.